The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Craphound wunderkammer man-cave to beat all
• Neil Gaiman wishes the Open Rights Group a happy 5th birthday!
• Clear, brief technical description of Android
• Irish journalism's trenchant criticism of govt bailout plans
• Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless
• Beautiful lighting for an auld spiral staircase
• Solar furnace melts rock
• Vintage seed packaging: hand-lettering loveliness ahoy!
• Machine of Death goes Creative Commons
• Viral NYC subway flasher caught - Dickflash.com mourns?
• FBI, NYPD and Port Authority cops mistake teenaged dance troupe for terrorists
• Designing buildings that you don't get lost in (and why architects don't do this)
• TSA looks at Adam Savage's junk, misses his two 12" razor blades
• Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Co-Lo, Do
• Wikileaks hints at diplomatic cable release "7 times" greater than Iraq War Logs
• Report: TSA behavior detection officer kidnaps, rapes woman before attempting suicide
• A list of things we do to innocent people to prevent terrorism in America
• HIV attack on neuroscientist raises eyebrows
• Pornoscanner CEO flew with Obama to India
• Doogie Horner's chart of talk show hosts: a Boing Boing exclusive
• LIVE RIGHT NOW: The eight-month demolition of The Spectrum
• Dancing with Invisible Light: portraits shot with Kinect's infrared structured light
• Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
• Judge John Hodgman Ep. 4: Tear Down That Wall
• Don't Stay Here. (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
• Classic Thanksgiving scene in 'Giant'
• This seems like a good time to talk about trains
• Heroes of Gulf oil leak: A scientist and a cell phone
• In case you missed it: TSA Open Thread
• Etymology of "OK"

Craphound wunderkammer man-cave to beat all Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:06 AM PST Alex in Sydney, Australia collects everything except "glassware & porcelain (unless it holds beer of course)" and he has an enormous shed in which he arranges his many collections "just-so" for best breathtakingness: * Tools: workshop / garden / unusual tools (rustier the better - de-rusting is a favorite pastime) * Oil Cans, oilers, grease guns. * Still Cameras / Movie Cameras / Slide Projectors / Movie Projectors and related items. * Breweriana: drink trays, tankards/steins, cork screws, soda siphons, coasters, bottles etc * Militaria: esp trench art * Weaponry: faux: guns, swords, spears, jousting lance, mace, battle axe, war hammer etc * Native Spears n Bows (some real and some faux) * Maritime: boats, oars, rowlocks, telescopes, ship lights, ship candle holder etc * Fishing: rods, reels, baskets, hooks, floats, lures, nets, spear-guns etc * Pirate related (how do you know if you're a pirate? . . . you just argh!) * Kitchenalia (yes it's sad - but I like anything old - and they're sort of tools?) The man cave to beat all man sheds - collecting wise (Thanks, Uncle Wilco, via Submitterator)   Julian Barnes On His Favorite Wunderkammer - Boing Boing The Wunderkammer that is Webb Gallery - Boing Boing Pesco's talk from TEDxSoMa: The World as a Wunderkammer - Boing Boing Crocheted Wunderkammer - Boing Boing Andy Paiko's wunderkammer of glass sculpture - Boing Boing Patrick Segui's wunderkammer art - Boing Boing Wacko Jacko's wunderkammer for sale - Boing Boing Wunderkammer-esque serving trays - Boing Boing

Neil Gaiman wishes the Open Rights Group a happy 5th birthday! Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:58 AM PST Today is the UK Open Rights Group's fifth birthday. Five years on, ORG has amazed and delighted me with its capacity to do effective, engaging policy work in a country that desperately needs it. The UK's technological relationship with privacy, free speech, network policy, and censorship is as fraught as any other country on Earth, and I sleep better knowing that ORG is "protecting my bits." Have you joined yet? It's our birthday! Celebrating 5 years of ORG (Disclosure: I co-founded the Open Rights Group and serve on its advisory council)   Stop DRM on UK TV! Sign onto ORG's comments - Boing Boing Open Rights Group forum on proposal to cut British households off ... Bruce Schneier/Open Rights Group benefit, London, 4 Dec - Boing Boing Open Rights Group benefit with me and Charlie Stross in London ... Open Rights Group's busiest-ever year - Boing Boing HOWTO talk to your MP about the UK Digital Economy Bill ... Open Rights Group call for photos on Britain's march into the ... Join Open Rights Group, get a signed copy of Lessig's new book ... Open Rights Group to Downing Street: find out how Phorm works ...

Clear, brief technical description of Android Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:26 AM PST Tim "XML" Bray is now working on Android for Google; he's got a great post called "What Android Is" that explains in good, high-level, technical detail what Android is made from and how you make stuff with it. Linux · Underneath everything is a reasonably up-to-date Linux kernel (2.6.32 in my current Nexus One running Froyo), with some power-saving extensions we cooked up; the process of trying to merge this stuff into upstream Linux has been extended and public and is by no means over. ¶ Android runs on Linux, but I'd be nervous about calling it a distro because it leaves out so much that people expect in one of those: libraries and shells and editors and GUIs and programming frameworks. It's a pretty naked kernel, which becomes obvious the first time you find yourself using a shell on an Android device. If it were a distro it'd be one of the higher-volume ones, shipping at 200K units a day in late 2010. But nobody counts these things, and then there are a ton of embedded flavors of Linux shipping in unremarkable pieces of consumer electronics, so there's a refreshing absence of anyone claiming to be "the most popular Linux". I like that. What Android Is (via O'Reilly Radar)   G1 Android phone coming October 22 for $179 - Boing Boing Video: Google Android phone user interface (looking great ... 7" Android Tablet Touch PC, indeed. - Boing Boing Wired on Google Android - Boing Boing Carriers close down Android - Boing Boing Google Instant now available for Android and iPhone - Boing Boing Quake III for Android Boing Boing Android installed on iPhone - Boing Boing TOR for Android: anonymize your phone's data-connection - Boing Boing Android App Inventor: giving everyone the ability to hack their ... Randall Munroe's Android bug-reports - Boing Boing Rogers Canada forces Android update that takes away root access ... Book-tours with Android - Boing Boing Android app crowdsources UK election spending survey - Boing Boing Asus prepares its own Android phone - Boing Boing

Irish journalism's trenchant criticism of govt bailout plans Posted: 24 Nov 2010 03:33 AM PST The low-brow "red-top" tabloids of the Commonwealth (and the former Commonwealth) are not much for journalism, but they sure know how to lay out a front page. Case in point: the Irish Daily Star's commentary on the Oireachtas's bailout plan: USELESS GOBSHITES. USELESS GOBSHITES (via @pongogirl)   UK newspaper headlines of Sept 12, 2001 - Boing Boing Newspaper headlines of Obama election win, Nov. 5 2008 - Boing Boing Sensationalist London newspaper headline - Boing Boing London Evening Standard headline generator - Boing Boing

Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless Posted: 23 Nov 2010 11:58 PM PST In "What Good Is Wall Street?" a long, thoughtfully argued piece in the New Yorker, John Cassidy makes the case that "Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless" -- it doesn't "provide liquidity" or "price risk," it merely extracts farcical rents for the relatively utilitarian task of moving money around: Most people on Wall Street, not surprisingly, believe that they earn their keep, but at least one influential financier vehemently disagrees: Paul Woolley, a seventy-one-year-old Englishman who has set up an institute at the London School of Economics called the Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. "Why on earth should finance be the biggest and most highly paid industry when it's just a utility, like sewage or gas?" Woolley said to me when I met with him in London. "It is like a cancer that is growing to infinite size, until it takes over the entire body." From 1987 to 2006, Woolley, who has a doctorate in economics, ran the London affiliate of GMO, a Boston-based investment firm. Before that, he was an executive director at Barings, the venerable British investment bank that collapsed in 1995 after a rogue-trader scandal, and at the International Monetary Fund. Tall, soft-spoken, and courtly, Woolley moves easily between the City of London, academia, and policymaking circles. With a taste for Savile Row suits and a keen interest in antiquarian books, he doesn't come across as an insurrectionary. But, sitting in an office at L.S.E., he cheerfully told me that he regarded himself as one. "What we are doing is revolutionary," he said with a smile. "Nobody has done anything like it before." What Good Is Wall Street?   Finance columnist explains capitalism to children: take things ... J.D.Roth on DIY finance - Boing Boing

Beautiful lighting for an auld spiral staircase Posted: 23 Nov 2010 11:54 PM PST The design firm of Speirs + Major got the contract to update the lighting in Edinburgh's Usher Hall. Their solution for the hall's magnificent spiral staircase was this striking acrylic cylinder surrounding fluorescent tubes: "the inner layer is frosted to soften the light while the outer layer is etched with a ringed pattern that catches the light. each fluorescent section is separated by shorter sections of frosted glass rings uplit with leds to add sparkle and introduce variation along the length." speirs + major: usher hall, edinburgh (via Cribcandy)   Spiral staircase built around a 75' tree - Boing Boing Tiny footprint staircase - Boing Boing Inside-out staircase - Boing Boing Wine-cellar encapsulated in a staircase - Boing Boing

Solar furnace melts rock Posted: 23 Nov 2010 11:50 PM PST In this clip from BBC One's "Bang Goes the Theory," a clip of a high-performance solar furnace that can focus normal sunshine into a heat-ray that reaches 3,500C, hot enough to melt rocks. Jem Melts Rock Using Sunshine - Bang Goes The Theory - Series 3, Episode 5 Preview - BBC One (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)   Time-lapse of rotting food - Boing Boing

Vintage seed packaging: hand-lettering loveliness ahoy! Posted: 23 Nov 2010 11:47 PM PST From The Dieline, a product packaging blog, a look at vintage seed-packet packaging, with the most glorious, exuberant hand-lettering this side of a Victorian seaside village. Vintage Packaging: Flower Seed Packets from the 1800s

Machine of Death goes Creative Commons Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:40 AM PST David Malki ! sez, A lot has happened in the last few weeks with MACHINE OF DEATH [ed: a fantastic anthology of stories about people who know manner but not the date of their death in advance]. The internet en masse made a self-published project that the big publishers turned down into the #1 book on Amazon. Now, less than a month later, the book that started as a crazy, crowdsourced idea is thundering into mainstream bookstores across the US and Canada. We're thrilled to have been the recipient of many, many wonderful reviews and have even been named by Amazon as a top-10 book of 2010 (Customer Favorites in Sci-Fi & Fantasy). Here is the entire book as a free, downloadable, Creative-Commons licensed, DRM-free PDF, with our compliments. We want you to read it and we hope you love it too. Announcing the free PDF download of MACHINE OF DEATH & the free podcast.   Machine of Death Amazon campaign infuriates Glenn Beck - Boing Boing Today is the day to buy MACHINE OF DEATH - Boing Boing

Viral NYC subway flasher caught - Dickflash.com mourns? Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:44 AM PST Jezebel follows up with the story of the awesome take-no-prisoners attitude of the woman in the video above, who, after being flashed by a creep on the NYC subway, gave him the tongue-lashing of a lifetime, which drew the attention of her fellow passengers and led to the man's arrest. But not everyone is delighted to see the flasher caught: Jezebel reports on the incredibly creepy world of Dickflash.com, a community for men who get off on exposing themselves nonconsensually to women and girls: The forum is full of useful tips, such as: * How to obtain fake license plates for "carjacking." * How to properly photograph the act -- "the tasks of keeping the dick & female in the same frame while jerking and being aware of your surroundings is somewhat overwhelming while at a spa or outdoor park," complained one commenter. * How to hide your genitalia with books and newspapers, just enough to avoid being caught. "It is all about positioning," commented the aptly-monikered "Crazy Jerking." Click through for even more creepiness. Apparently, the site is owned by AdultFriendFinder, who share corporate parentage with Penthouse. The Disturbing World Of Dickflash.com   Accused flasher's defense: embrarassingly small penis - Boing Boing Alleged subway wanker caught on cameraphone, Flickr - Boing Boing

FBI, NYPD and Port Authority cops mistake teenaged dance troupe for terrorists Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:54 PM PST The FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Port Authority police shut down the Lincoln Tunnel for 45 minutes last week because someone reported a group of people running through it in camouflage. The camo-wearers were a group of 16-year-old dancers who were late for a TV appearance on BET: "it seems fairly obvious that if a squad of terrorists did try to infiltrate Manhattan or any other urban area, they would not dress in camouflage to do it, and would not be sprinting."

Designing buildings that you don't get lost in (and why architects don't do this) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:54 PM PST "Getting Lost in Buildings," a paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science, looks at the intersection of cognitive science and architecture, and suggests directions in designing buildings that are easier to navigate. I'm one of those zero-spatial-sense people who can stay in a hotel for a week and still turn down the wrong corridor every time I get out of the elevator, so this is fascinating stuff for me: Some buildings, on the other hand, make it difficult. Carlson and her coauthors, Christoph Hölscher of the University of Freiburg, Thomas F. Shipley of Temple University, and Ruth Conroy Dalton of University College, London, use the Seattle Central Library as an example. The bold building, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, opened in 2004 and won awards for its design. But visitors complain that it's difficult to navigate. People expect floors to have similar layouts, but the first five levels of the library are all different; even the outside walls don't necessarily line up. Normally, lines of sight help people get around, but the library has long escalators that skip over levels, making it hard to see where they go. For building users who may find navigating in new environments challenging, there are strategies that are helpful. "I used to worry when I explore a new city by myself that I would not find my way back to the hotel," Carlson says. "However, this simple trick is effective. At each intersection where I need to turn, I spin around to see what the intersection will look like from my return perspective. That way, I will be able to recognize it from the other direction, and I can store that view also in my cognitive map." This strategy also tends to work well for indoor navigation. Architects, on the other hand, may be among the class of people with very strong spatial skills, because their craft requires numerous spatial transformations, such as needing to envision 3D space from 2D depictions. One unanticipated consequence of such abilities is that they may not be very good at taking the perspective of a user with poorer spatial skills, and therefore may not be able to fully anticipate where users may have navigational difficulties within their buildings.   Cognitive science vs. crappy PowerPoint slides - Boing Boing Visual study guide to cognitive biases - Boing Boing Cognitive Bias song - Boing Boing Important fMRI study literacy tips - Boing Boing

TSA looks at Adam Savage's junk, misses his two 12" razor blades Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:46 PM PST Back in May, before the widespread introduction of pornoscanners at US airports, Mythbusters' Adam Savage was selected for an early test of the machines. As he recounts in this presentation from w00tstock Seattle, the pornoscanner turned up a long and loving look at his penis, but the screeners missed the fact that he'd forgotten to leave his two 12" razor blades at home before setting out for the airport. #w00tstock Seattle: Adam Savage says "WTF, TSA?" (Thanks, EMJ, via Submitterator!)   Naked airport scanner catches cellphone, misses bomb components ...

Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Co-Lo, Do Posted: 23 Nov 2010 10:21 PM PST I'm not ashamed to admit that I harbor unnatural feelings towards my servers. If programming and writing are both expressions of one's personality, then the content and systems on a server are a piece of you. Where it gets complicated is when you can transplant the ticking heart of a server--its logical brain--into another piece of hardware. You've transmigrated the soul without any of the messy ethical considerations. This is a common theme in modern sci-fi, because the notion of where the essence of who we are lives (in wetware or hardware) fascinates us. I wrote today at the Economist's Babbage blog about my move from owning several rack-mounted servers to a couple of virtual private servers (VPSes), virtualized computers running on computers I'll never see or touch. The move was moving, and I'm hard pressed to understand why. I couldn't understand why I was near tears. It was only a computer server I was shutting down, not pulling the plug on a life or saying goodbye to faithful pet. Nonetheless, my eyes were moist. ... Virtualisation is the classic brain-in-a-jar scenario. If you, dear reader, were a brain in a jar with all your sensory inputs mapped into a simulation program a la "The Matrix," how would you know? As long as the illusion were perfect--and no Agent Smiths intruded--you could live your life in blissful delusion. So, too, do virtual servers perform: unaware. Photo by...what the hell! Cory Doctorow? I swear, I just did a search for brains. Via Creative Commons.

Wikileaks hints at diplomatic cable release "7 times" greater than Iraq War Logs Posted: 23 Nov 2010 09:25 PM PST The Pentagon today warned lawmakers that WikiLeaks, working together with various news organizations, may publish a "tranche" of classified U.S. State Department cables as early as Friday, Nov. 26. In an e-mail today to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King said the documents "touch on an enormous range of very sensitive foreign policy issues," adding, "We anticipate that the release could negatively impact U.S. foreign relations," and "We will brief you once we have a better understanding of what documents the WikiLeaks publication contains." Bloomberg article, AP, Cryptome.

Report: TSA behavior detection officer kidnaps, rapes woman before attempting suicide Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:29 PM PST The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Randall Scott King, who has worked as a TSA behavior detection officer for nearly five years, allegedly tried to kill himself after abducting a woman, sexually assaulting her, then releasing her with a suicide note to deliver on his behalf. Police found the 49-year-old suspect inside his home (shown here) in Hogansville, Georgia, with wounds on his body. The attack is reported to have taken place on the night of November 17, 2010. More: CNN, WSB Radio, WGCL TV. (Via BB Submitterator, thanks ablebody)

A list of things we do to innocent people to prevent terrorism in America Posted: 23 Nov 2010 07:49 PM PST "Here's a non-comprehensive list of things innocent people have suffered in order to prevent terrorist attacks on America," by Rafe Colburn.

HIV attack on neuroscientist raises eyebrows Posted: 23 Nov 2010 08:34 PM PST David Jentsch, a UCLA neuroscientist who conducts controversial research on live primates and rodents, received a package earlier this month containing razor blades and a threatening message according to a report today in the LA Times. A post on the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) website points to "liberation activists identifying themselves as members of the Justice Department" as the party claiming to have sent Jentsch and a UCLA colleague HIV-tainted razor blades. (The LA Times initially reported that the ALF itself claimed responsibility). Jentsch is the head of a pro-vivisection advocacy group. His past research, much of it funded by the NIH, includes tests on monkeys that animal rights activists find particularly reprehensible: one involved injecting vervets in "squeeze cages" twice a day with high doses of PCP, then killing them and examining their brains; other projects involved similar procedures with methamphetamine. "How would Jentsch like the same thing he does to primates to be done to him?" the ALF's statement said. In March 2009, Jentsch's vehicle burned outside of his Sherman Oaks residence in a "suspicious arson attack." The ALF claimed responsibility for that attack. So, let's get to the comments. Best analogy comparing either the ALF or the neuroscientist to Hitler wins a pony. Go! Below, vervet monkeys that are not on PCP. (CC-licensed image courtesy of Roo Reynolds, via Flickr.)

Pornoscanner CEO flew with Obama to India Posted: 23 Nov 2010 06:42 PM PST Huh, this is an odd little footnote: Deepak Chopra (not THAT Deepak Chopra), Chairman and CEO of OSI Systems—they make those the Rapiscan backscatter imaging devices now used at many TSA checkpoints—was one of a number of executives who accompanied President Obama on that recent trip to India. Here's OSI's press release. They have their own political action committee. (thanks, Joel Johnson!)

Doogie Horner's chart of talk show hosts: a Boing Boing exclusive Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:54 PM PST We've featured the amazing work of graphic designer and comedian Doogie Horner on Boing Boing before. (HOWTO explain the Internet to a Dickensian street urchin, Things to say during sex, Heavy Metal band name taxonomy) He's got a new book out filled with these funny charts, called Everything Explained Through Flowcharts. Everything Explained Through Flowcharts is packed with meticulously designed charts that trace the labyrinthine connections that order the universe, illuminate life's great mysteries, and cause eye strain in senior citizens. Swiss scientists at the prestigious University of Helsinki have said that Everything Explained Through Flowcharts is the closest thing there is to a working unified field theory, and have gone on to claim that they aren't Swiss, aren't scientists, and aren't sure whether or not Helsinki is in Switzerland. And yet the Swiss consulate has not denied that this book contains more than two hundred illustrations, forty mammoth charts, and innumerable supporting graphs and essays, including: • An illustrated matrix of WWF Finishing Moves • Heavy metal band names taxonomy • The noble art of zeppelin warfare demystified • How to win any argument • Tragedy to comedy conversion chart for comedians • A creepy drawing of a baby skeleton • How to tell if you're an evil twin To celebrate the launch of book, Doogie created a chart of late night talk show hosts especially for Boing Boing. The above is just a small portion of the chart. The entire chart can be viewed here.

LIVE RIGHT NOW: The eight-month demolition of The Spectrum Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:37 PM PST I take a perverse pride in the fact that this, the worst building-demolition video in the history of the genre, is set in my hometown. It documents the attempted destruction of The Spectrum, Philadelphia's shuttered '60s-era sports arena, and it violates every precept of building-demo videos: It's slow, awkward, and utterly lacks any anticipatory drama or final, dusty explosion. Plus it gets bonus points for the weird, Palin-y diction of the Fox News anchorbabe who tries to fill time by explaining that the demo is "a little uneffective... Y'know, we wanna bring you these pictures because, y'know, this is a building that longer is being used, and they're gonna be doing this big destruction of it... " Any way you look at it, it's Art.

Dancing with Invisible Light: portraits shot with Kinect's infrared structured light Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:16 PM PST Shown here, images from Audrey Penven's photography series "Dancing with Invisible Light: A series of interactions with Kinect's infrared structured light." From her description of the project: With these images I was exploring the unique photographic possibilities presented by using a Microsoft Kinect as a light source. The Kinect - an inexpensive videogame peripheral - projects a pattern of infrared dots known as "structured light". Invisible to the eye, this pattern can be captured using an infrared camera. The Kinect uses the deformation of this dot pattern to derive 3D information about its subjects (an ability which has already spawned an explosion of incredible digital art). As a photographer I am most interested in the nature and quality of light: how light behaves in the physical world, and how it interacts with and affects the subjects that it illuminates. For this shoot my models and I were essentially working blind, with the results visible only after each image was captured. Together, we explored the unique physicality of structured light, finding our way in the darkness by touch and intuition. Dancing with invisible light. View the full set here (prude alert: contains both portraits and nudes). To purchase a print, contact the photographer at audrey.penven@gmail.com: 11x14 for $60, 16 x 20 for $120. Dig the crazy lens flares the Kinect light creates in the shot below! Related coolness at openkinect.org. Credits: Models: qtrnevermore, C. King, Mike Estee, Sloane Soleil, Helyx, Star St. Germain, Ian Baker, Annetta Black, Josh St. John. Assistants: Aaron Muszalski, Ian Baker, Mike Estee An earlier photo set is also online here. (Thanks, sfslim!)

Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:01 PM PST Denis Dutton, author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, gave an interesting talk on the evolutionary reasons for our appreciation for beauty at TED. It was brilliantly illustrated on a white board by Andrew Park. But my friend James Gurney (creator of the Dinotopia series, and author of the new book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter), took issue with Dutton's theory: Dutton doesn't dig very deeply into the nature and the range of the core aesthetic responses, and why those responses might be evolutionarily adaptive. He makes rather unsupportable claims about how he thinks Homo Erectus responded to hand axes. How does he know the axes were art objects? Maybe they were used as money, not art. And how does he know Homo Erectus didn't have language?   Dutton's theory also proposes that natural selection provides for a repulsion reaction to such dangerous things as standing at the edge a cliff. How, then, would Dutton's theory account for the experience of the sublime, as formulated by aesthetic philosophers such as Edmund Burke? According to Burke, we're attracted, rather than repulsed, by unsettling and disquieting experiences. (Example: Wanderer by Caspar David Friedrich.) Far more convincing—and useful— is Tolstoy's notion that art is the deliberate transmission of emotion. It applies to dance, theater, painting, music, and all other forms. And it is immensely practical to the working artist, because it provides a clear test for the aesthetic value of a particular work. Tolstoy's theory is a rich topic, perhaps fodder for a future post.  James Gurney on Denis Dutton's Darwinian theory of beauty

Judge John Hodgman Ep. 4: Tear Down That Wall Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:39 PM PST "This week on the Judge John Hodgman Podcast, a dispute between friends. Foy argues that breaking the fourth wall ruins film and theater. His friend Matt disagrees. Only Judge John Hodgman can decide. To listen to this week's Judge John Hodgman podcast, subscribe in iTunes or using this feed." Judge John Hodgman Ep. 4: Tear Down That Wall See Also: Judge John Hodgman: the podcast

Don't Stay Here. (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:18 PM PST "Nope. Don't." Contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Jenny Steeves (blog, Twitter).

Classic Thanksgiving scene in 'Giant' Posted: 23 Nov 2010 03:11 PM PST Video link. People who enjoy classic films and/or getting angry might enjoy this moment featuring the resplendent Liz Taylor in the classic 1956 film Giant. It has different significance for everyone, so please share what it means to you in the comments.

This seems like a good time to talk about trains Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:55 PM PST As we wrangle with airport security this holiday season, let's all take a moment to give thanks for trains. Here's a map of the US showing recent investments in rail, and the long-term plans for what our train system could someday become. Some of this will be true high-speed travel. Other corridors are simply spots where small (and relatively cheap) upgrades in infrastructure—not to mention increased enforcement of passenger train right of way—can fix a broken system and make trains a viable competitor to increasingly onerous air travel. Granted, I'm not sure I buy the argument that train travel is somehow immune to the creeping specter of excessive security. But, for now at least, it's got the potential to be a pleasant alternative.

Heroes of Gulf oil leak: A scientist and a cell phone Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:28 PM PST The Deepwater Horizon oil spill took months to contain, and the disaster might not have ended as soon as it did were it not for a handy cell-phone camera and the hard work of US Geological Survey researcher Paul Hsieh. The cap that ultimately staunched the petroleum hemorrhage didn't seem to be working at first, and authorities were set to remove it, according to the Associated Press. As scientists and government officials deliberated, someone sent a cell phone picture of the pressure readings to Hsieh. Over the course of one very long, and notably non-caffeinated night, Hsieh used the single photo to pull together a model that explained what was going on at the well, and showed that the cap was working, after all. His model was the linchpin that kept the all-important cap in place. Some rights reserved by KB35

In case you missed it: TSA Open Thread Posted: 23 Nov 2010 02:12 PM PST Just a note for those who may have missed: there's a very lively discussion in the TSA open thread, do join.

Etymology of "OK" Posted: 23 Nov 2010 01:57 PM PST Today, "OK" is probably one of the most universally known English words. But it originated in 1839 as a joke, mocking the semi-literate, who supposedly spelled "all correct" as "oll korrect". Basically, OK was the "Get a Brain! MORANS" of its day. (Via Robin Sloan)

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